Urban Acupuncture in Taipei

A number of conditions can be attributed to driving the recent revolutionary movement of urban acupuncture and locally-led interventions in cities around the world. Political, economic, and environmental uncertainty; the deindustrialization of cities that has led to an increase in vacant lots and buildings; and an increasingly mobile workforce all support the desire for more flexible and adaptable spaces and uses (Bishop and Williams, 2012). The inefficiency of institutional bureaucracy has also been identified as a contributing factor as to why citizens are taking local improvements into their own hands. These all lead to an increasing awareness that traditional planning processes are struggling in its capacity to be adaptable and resilient enough to respond to local needs. The rising sense of responsibility among citizens who actively partake in responding to local situations, separate from traditional planning processes such as attending planning consultations or sitting on community boards and commissions, reflect the discrepancy between contemporary planning processes and its adequacy in engaging stakeholders and addressing local issues. Temporary interventions have emerged as a gateway for improvements to local neighbourhoods in a more timely, efficient, and less costly and risky manner. These informal initiatives are popularly known as "urban acupuncture". In the context of Taipei, urban acupuncture is a city leading in its local transformative capacity where people-centric planning is implemented on a governmental level. Urban acupuncture is put into practice by the Taipei City Government through an apparatus called ?Urban Regeneration Station (URS)? to promote local development through the strength of local communities. URS sites are shared by all citizens - even throughout the innovative progress is public participation the main priority. Creativity, art, culture and design are integrated into the practice of urban regeneration as a catalyst of urban redevelopment. This thesis purports that urban acupuncture has a particularly important role in the future of cities and its communities because it challenges the assumption that cities can improve only through major spending and tortuous rounds of paperwork and approvals. It allows citizens and officials to test new ideas on a low-cost, low-risk model. If something works, great. If it doesn?t, well, on to the next experimental idea. Drawing upon the metaphor of therapeutic acupuncture, examples will be explored to highlight ways in which punctual interventions can activate places, asserting the importance of urban acupuncture in facilitating more holistic understandings of urban health

Synthesis, characterisation and application of novel quinones for the detection of latent fingermarks

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Science.Identification of an individual through fingermarks is one of the oldest types of evidence in forensic science. A number of techniques are available for the detection of latent fingermarks on porous surfaces; for example 1,2‐indanedione zinc (IND‐Zn), 1,8‐diazafluoren‐9‐one (DFO), and ninhydrin. While these techniques produce excellent results, each has their drawbacks. For example, ninhydrin requires secondary post-treatment and cooling with liquid nitrogen to produce fluorescent fingermarks. DFO developed fingermarks are difficult to detect on coloured or highly patterned surfaces. IND‐Zn produces a highly fluorescent fingermark, however, under white light little contrast exists between the fingermark and the substrate. Therefore, there is need for research into the development of new fingermark reagents. Quinones have been used for the development of amino acids in chromatography and biochemistry. Recent research into the use of 2‐hydroxy‐1,4‐naphthoquinone (lawsone) has shown promising results for the development of latent fingermarks on porous surfaces. One of the aims of this thesis was to determine the reaction products between lawsone and three amino acids. These products were elucidated using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and quadrupole time‐of‐flight liquid chromatography‐mass spectrometry (LC‐QTOF‐MS). The proposed product is hypothesised to be similar between benzoquinones, naphthoquinones and anthraquinones as they differ only by π conjugation. Another aim of this thesis was to synthesise a variety of quinones with differences in conjugation and substitution in order to compare and determine differences in quantum yield and whether these effects would influence their ability to develop latent fingermarks on porous surfaces. A number of quinones were successfully synthesised and characterised using FTIR and NMR spectroscopy and LC‐MS. In this preliminary study, the synthesised quinones and lawsone were then evaluated as potential reagents for the development of latent fingermarks on porous surfaces. The development conditions, reagent concentration, solvent system, pH, and metal salts enhancements of each quinone were optimised using amino acids and fingermarks on different porous surfaces. All the quinones that were tested in this thesis did not produce coloured fingermarks and only developed faintly coloured amino acid test strips. Slight improvements in luminescence were observed when comparing the results of the amino acids and fingermarks developed by naphthoquinones and anthraquinones. This is this is likely due to steric hindrance preventing anthraquinones from forming the desired products. Comparisons were also made between the fingermarks developed by the synthesised compounds and IND‐Zn, with IND‐Zn developed fingermarks being far superior in luminescence

Anorexic Eating: Two Case Studies in Hong Kong

Little attention has been paid to the eating experience of anorectic females during the course of their illness. In order to enrich this understanding, two adult anorexics were selected and their emails were collected and analyzed. Analysis of these emails reveals the patients\u27 experiences with and feelings about eating, which can provide an in-depth understanding of their circumstances and family dynamics. The paper ends with a discussion of the results, limitations, and implications of using emails as the data source of a qualitative study, and how they can reveal the informants\u27 inner landscapes

The Secrets of Self-Starvation

This is a single case study for which a life history approach was adopted. The informant, a patient suffering from anorexia nervosa (AN), was specifically selected because of her particular circumstances. Three themes emerged from her narrative that accounted for self-starvation: saving money, reserving food and competing for slenderness. The paper explores these themes and closes by emphasizing the necessity of understanding the sensitive and untold story of a patient’s self-starvation in her cultural-familial context

Service Quality of the Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong

Service quality is an essential element for managers and marketers to successfully compete in the sport and leisure industry. The present study is a first of its kind research study evaluating the service quality of the Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong. In this study, extensive customer research was conducted to investigate the members’ usage, expectations, perceptions, and satisfaction levels in the Recreation and Sport Department. Data were collected from 559 members. This study provides a channel to listen to the voice of the customers and assist the managers to improve the service quality by pinpointing areas that need managerial action